Monthly Archives: February 2010

so yes, it was hot in melbourne, but it never got too hot for pizza. one day in january, after a short spell at luna park —

[ the kid is still too short for most of the rides, but we did qualify for the ghost train (a dud), and then the mini-roller coaster in the shape of a large green dragon (rollicking god fun for the 105cm-tall set). after which she procured for herself the largest fairy floss in the world. it was roughly half her height, and weighed enough that it eventually pulled itself off the stick. she kept calm and carried on, slipped her arm through the mass of spun sugar, and fashioned herself a fine edible bracelet. ]

– and a large amount of gelato that melted before we even made it down the street, and a good bout of digging in the sand beneath the promenade, and the merry side-stepping of washed-up jellyfish on the shore, we stumbled, somewhat sundazed, into il fornaio, which hangs off the prince hotel on ackland street. i’ve always come by at the wrong time, too late for lunch service, and this time, alas, we were once again told we could have drinks only, or anything from the display case.

fortunately, the display case still held a handful of small pizze. i picked the prosciutto. the waitress was kind enough to put it in the oven for a spell, and it was just the salty, crunchy-edged kind of mid-afternoon snack you might wish for, just in from the beach with your legs all sandy.

some days later, we took shelter at the NGV international. for a while, we pretended to look at art, though really we were more interested in standing over the impossibly sleek airconditioning vents in the floor of the gallery. and then also, lunch. the gallery kitchen beckoned, from its hiding place behind the ground floor escalators. and you will see this picture, and yawn and say, ho hum. i couldn’t help it! i am completely powerless against the lure of a prosciutto pizza, but look! this one was also decked out with fat slices of field mushrooms and a smattering of olives and fetta.

ahh… such pleasurable little discs of modestly puffy, barely charred dough, their sharp flavours uncompromised by just a scant amount of cheese. it’s a rarity around these parts i tells ya. if they had been just three bites larger, they would’ve been perfect.

what a long, terribly hot summer it’s been. our fault, i suppose, for spending most of it in sunny melbourne. on the most horrible day, we took shelter in the airconditioning of the arts centre; my plan was to see as much of the AC/DC exhibition as the kid would allow. except that we found ourselves drowning in a deluge of pink tulle. turns out it was fifteen minutes away from the lunchtime matinee of the angelina ballerina show, and hundreds of little girls in ballet dress-ups swarmed the lobby. the kid turned her large limpid eyes my way; the temperature in the street was the wrong side of 40; i handed over my credit card, and spent the next hour or so sitting in a sea of battery-operated glowsticks, watching lithe, human-sized mice dance across the stage.

but the temperature kept climbing, and at 1.40 in the wee hours of the morning, i woke up stifled. i poured myself down the hallway, and had a cold shower, and eventually got back to sleep. later we were to find out it was hovering in the lower-mid-40s all night, and when the temperature finally dropped at about 8am, it was to a refreshing 34°C.

ugh.

so we went out in search of icy treats, often. the lemon-lime and bitters sorbet at trampoline was truly delightful. a very fetching shade of palest pink which dissolved gracefully into a gentle citrusy tang on my tongue. i liked it so much i went back for more.

there was the emergency slurpee from a hole-in-the-wall 7-eleven one afternoon in the melty city, and a golden gaytime krusher at KFC one sunday when nothing else was open in shimmery rural victoria. it was a most unappetising shade of… bilge, a pale and lumpy yellow in the plastic tumbler, that tasted better than it looked, until it warmed up to room temperature.

and then, holy moley, there was the organic cinnamon donut gelato from fritz gelato at the souf melbourne markets. lush and milky with a streak of sticky red jam all the way through. behold its majestic crest sitting atop an enormous scoop of caramelised fig and roasted almond yoghurt gelato, equally lush and milky, and filled with crunchy little fun bits of seeds and nuts and burnt sugar. good times…

and then we came back to sydney, and the holidays galloped to a close, and the kid grew up and went off to school. no tears were shed from anyone involved.